Within this context, we provide initial insights on the makeup of YouTube science audiences and some of the factors that influence user engagement with YouTube science videos, by analyzing a unique, comprehensive set of back-end data from YouTube Analytics made available by the American Chemical Society. The small but growing body of empirical evidence guiding the practice of communicating science through YouTube reflects this increasing interest among communication scholars and practitioners. Given YouTube’s exceptionally far reach and potentially impactful role in disseminating scientific information, there has been an increasing interest in using its platform for science outreach purposes. Among the top categories of YouTube videos (with views and subscribers), science and technology videos generate a total of 12.2 billion monthly views, attract 1.3 billion subscribers, and are viewed for a total of 766.7 million hours. As the world’s largest video-sharing site, YouTube has over 1.5 billion monthly active users, which amount to approximately one-third of Internet users. The video-sharing site YouTube is particularly well suited for successful science communication online. The new media information environment is by nature “pluralistic, participatory and social” and presents unique opportunities for engaging the wider public with science. Online communication channels have significantly reshaped how people seek and understand scientific information and have blurred boundaries between scientists, science journalists, and general audiences. New communication tools give members of the scientific community the opportunity to directly engage with lay audiences. įaced with the deteriorated influence of legacy media in science communication, many leaders in the scientific community have called for scientists to engage and communicate directly with the public and argued that there is an urgent need to forge more responsive and closer connections between the scientific community and the general population as society moves forward with complex science developments. Science journalists, traditionally in charge of translating complex scientific information into formats that lay audiences find interesting and can easily digest, are vanishing from traditional newsrooms. In addition, the amount of space devoted to science and technology news (e.g., news time on television, column inches in print newspapers) in traditional media outlets is dwindling. Indeed, individuals are increasingly turning to online sources for scientific information and audiences for traditional print and broadcast media are shrinking especially for science and technology news. However, nowadays such media no longer have the central place they used to occupy in the science communication process. Research and practice in science communication have a long tradition of focusing on legacy media given their primary role in disseminating news about scientific breakthroughs and bridging the science-public divides. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Morgridge Institute for Research and the National Science Foundation.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. URL: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting information files.įunding: This material is based upon work supported by the Morgridge Institute for Research, awarded to DB, DAS the National Science Foundation under Grant No. Received: JAccepted: ApPublished: May 25, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Yang et al. Citation: Yang S, Brossard D, Scheufele DA, Xenos MA (2022) The science of YouTube: What factors influence user engagement with online science videos? PLoS ONE 17(5):Įditor: Fabiana Zollo, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, ITALY
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